


First and Last

by thecloserkin (tabacoychanel)



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Happy Ending, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 21:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/thecloserkin
Summary: In which Violet Baudelaire fends off a passel of unsuitable suitors and finds TRUE LOVE.





	First and Last

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merely/gifts).



> dear merely, happy yuletide! in case it wasn't clear from the tags: they totally love each other in a kissing way and not just a hugging way. thank you for the opportunity to write such an amazing prompt!
> 
> a million thanks to Azdaema for hashing out the ending with me!

Violet’s dance card wasn’t full yet but it was getting there. Klaus examined it while Violet herself bustled between wardrobe and boudoir, dumping petticoats and frocks into a pile at Sunny’s feet. None of the colorful garments had seen the outside of a trunk in the year that the Baudelaires had spent in mourning, but tonight’s ball would mark Violet’s first public appearance out of black gloves. It was to be her debut, and no one was less looking forward to it than she was. Sunny carefully smoothed out the flounce on a particularly fetching pelisse that Klaus could not recall Violet ever having donned—surely he would recollect seeing her in such an arresting shade of indigo?—adding wistfully as she laid it on the bed, “Biddy.”

“She’s right, you know,” said Klaus. “Sunny has many talents, but she can scarcely be expected to unpack your things _and_ hustle you into a ballgown _and_ dress your hair. It’s shocking our new guardian hasn’t sent up a maid to help.”

Violet was unperturbed. “Which of those powder-faced women would you rather have in here with us, the head housemaid or her ladyship’s French abigail?”

“Neither, of course. But if she insists on giving a ball to mark your come-out—against your express wishes, no less!—would not it behoove her to ensure your appearance does her credit?”

“Klaus, I had no notion you thought me such an antidote as all that.” Her tone was drily amused.

“I don’t think there’s a girl alive who holds a candle to you —“

“—doubtless, not being acquainted with any other girls—

“—as well you know! Only it puts my back up, to see you receive less than your due.”

“Uncle Monty,” interjected Sunny.

There was a glum silence as all three Baudelaires contemplated how much better it would have been had they been allowed to remain with their guardian of the past year. True, Uncle Monty’s house did not boast a ballroom the size of a barn suitable for launching young debutantes into Society. It did, however, contain a beautiful glass Conservatory that housed many rare reptile specimens, in which the Baudelaires had spent untold happy hours. The day Mr. Poe came to fetch them away in the hired hack, there had been many tearful farewells. Uncle Monty had assured them they were welcome back anytime. But Uncle Monty lived in the country, and the arduous, jolting journey by stage coach was not one the Baudelaires could envisage repeating with any frequency. Uncle Monty was also a bachelor—and what was needed, insisted Mr. Poe, was a matron.

“It’s none of my doing, mind. I could not in good conscience recommend Town life to anyone, _particularly_ not children. The very air is unhealthy, the company dissolute. Well, in my profession one must go where the work is,” he said, in response to Klaus pointing out the existence of his own two children. “But I’m sure I don’t know what could have possessed your father to write that infernal clause into the will—if he had let _me_ advise him… well, he did not, and I never heard of anything so profligate! The entire fortune to go to Violet upon her marriage! It is usual, you know, to consult one’s solicitor on such matters, and had your father done so, given our firm’s longstanding relationship with your family ….” Mr. Poe went on in this vein for some time, refining more upon the insult of _not being consulted_ in the drawing up of the Will than the calamity of Klaus and Sunny left portionless, or what was the same thing, at the mercy of Violet’s husband. And a husband she must have if the Baudelaire fortune was not to pass into the hands of distant relatives. To acquire a husband, one must have a sponsor to bring one out. Thus were they brought to London by Mr. Poe, who was very well satisfied with the guardian he had selected for them. He confided that Sir Jerome resided in the _most_ fashionable part of Grovesnor Square. It took Violet, Klaus and Sunny five minutes in Lady Squalor’s presence before they saw plainly that Sir Jerome could not possibly have taken a house in anything _but_ the most fashionable district in London. Though Esmé seldom rose before noon, she contrived to change her costume three or four times before dinner and it was rumored she disdained to even wear the same _bonnet_ twice. She was a lady who moved in the very first circles. Presumably she was in a position to propel Violet into a brilliant match. Klaus would be more impressed by Lady Squalor’s undeniably high social credit if she had shown the slightest inclination to exercise it on Violet’s behalf.

“It says here a Mr. Smells has engaged you for the quadrille.”

“Likely he has. Don’t ask me who he is though. I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

“That’s just it, isn’t it? Lady Squalor ought to have told you. It’s her duty to screen out the ineligible sorts.”

“Do you think I will make an eligible match? I pray only to avoid a disastrous one. I shall marry the first man who offers to give you and Sunny twenty thousand pounds each. In writing,” she added after a moment's consideration.

This time the silence was tinged with incredulity. Sunny ventured, “Midas?” and Klaus could not have agreed more. “Violet, this is lunacy. I wouldn’t touch a shilling if it meant you spending the rest of your life yoked to a repulsive gudgeon.”

The look she threw him told him two things: that she was unmoved in her resolution, and that she thought him very foolish. “It’s what you would have gotten if the will had divided everything up evenly as I’m sure Mother and Father intended.”

“Mother and Father would be the last people to condone you throwing your life away!“

“Mother and Father charged me to take care of you both. And that’s what I am going to do. Unless you see some other way out of it.”

And because Klaus was quite well versed in the relevant statutes, and this story takes place many decades before the passage of the Married Women’s Property Act, I am sorry to apprise the reader that Klaus indeed could see no way out. On the one hand, he yearned to encourage Violet to marry whomever would make her happy. On the other, what surety did they have that such a person would act in Sunny’s best interests?

“You see it’s the only way,” she continued briskly. “Don’t let’s speak any more on that head. As to how I will get the hoop and train arrayed about me, if you will be so good as to stuff me into this steel-and-whalebone contraption I am certain we will contrive somehow.” And she proceeded to strip down to her chemise.

“Me,” repeated Klaus, faintly.

“Do you wish Sunny to clamber up on the washstand? Or will you lace me up yourself? I give you permission to cut my stays if I should be overset by a fit of the vapors in the course of the ball.”

Klaus was momentarily silenced by the image thus conjured, although a lady less likely than Violet to succumb to vapors it would have been difficult to conceive of. In the meantime she had shrugged into the corset and presented her back to him, and there was nothing for it but to do as he was bid. The new fashion for shorter, curved corsets emphasized Violet’s tiny waist and small hips, of which he was appreciative. He was less appreciative of the extra shoulder straps, and how the stiffness of the jean seemed to drive the breath out of her lungs. As he listened to her short, shallow breaths the observation escaped him that she was wearing a cage.

She turned her face a quarter so he could see her profile. “Yes, and I’d better get used to it.”

“Not if I have anything to say to it,” he grumbled, mulish.

“To be sure you are now head of the family and I must defer to your judgment.”

“Violet, be serious.” Having finished his commission he was oddly reluctant to release her. Sunny was ready with the petticoat, a roll of tape held between her teeth for the purpose of attaching the skirt. “I implore you, do not force me to watch you do this.”

Violet heeded the former command while ignoring the latter. “When you are up at Oxford next year, will you promise to write?”

Since she knew from his days at Eton that he was a faithful and avid correspondent, there was no need whatsoever to extract such a promise from him. Yet he could conjecture how it must be a year from now: Violet all alone and unloved, shackled to an unfeeling lout of a husband. She would look to the arrival of the post as the only spot of brightness in a drab and circumscribed existence. Unless, of course, she was already increasing, in which case her brilliant inventor’s mind would be snuffed out by the necessity of tending to a growing brood. He swallowed. “I will see you comfortably settled before I go anywhere, that I can promise.”

“And I have told you, I _cannot_ be comfortable until you and Sunny are provided for.”

“Darcy,” suggested Sunny.

“We can hope,” sighed Violet. “I require neither manners nor address nor a large fortune, only let him have a warm disposition toward my siblings.”

Klaus was on the verge of telling her to take some thought for herself instead of other people when Sunny emerged from under the pile of gowns clutching one made of palest green spider-gauze embroidered with acorns. “Now where in blazes did you get that?” She had certainly not been visiting the Bond Street shops while they lived with Uncle Monty. She had been far too busy running experiments in the unused rooms in the servants’ quarters that had been turned over for her use. By Klaus’s calculations she ruined an average of one walking-dress per week, meaning her wardrobe had if anything suffered a decline.

“Mama’s,” explained a triumphant Sunny.

Klaus could not imagine anyone, even their adored mother, looking more radiant than Violet did just then in her stockings and lace underdress, and he said so. This sentiment elicited an absent “Hmmmm” of acknowledgement. When he took his leave by dropping a kiss on both his sisters’ brows, however, Violet adjured him to remember to leave Father’s pocket-watch on the bureau for her to mend tomorrow. 

—

Sir Jerome was to escort her down to open the ball but when the time came Violet found herself thrown for the the most unpleasant of surprises.

There was a clump of figures at the top of the landing. At Violet’s approach one sprang out in front to bar her way. “What is that cakesniffer doing at _my_ come-out?” it demanded, blonde ringlets quivering with affront. 

“Now, now, Carmelita, don’t vex yourself, you’ll get wrinkles that way. There can be no harm in Miss Baudelaire standing up for a few dances—why, only look at the cut of that bodice, it must be four seasons out of date! If she wants for partners she can sit amongst the chaperones and admire you, darling girl. Tomorrow you’ll be the toast of the _ton_.” That was Lady Squalor, who only a fortnight ago had sent out the invitations bearing Violet’s name. You had to admire the sheer nerve of it, if nothing else. She was flanked by her husband and another gentleman, the sight of whom sent yet another sickening jolt of recognition up Violet’s spine: A man with one eyebrow, dressed incongruously in a waistcoat and top-boots that would have got him turned away from the door at Almack’s. Violet longed to plummet through the floor or, failing that, to deliver a cutting retort that would wipe the jeers off their faces. None came to mind, and she opted instead to sink into a curtsy. “Good day, Count Olaf.”

Sir Jerome had launched into a disjointed apology in which he hoped Miss Baudelaire was not disappointed—he was sure she could have no objection—Miss Spats being so recently arrived in town—such a close friend of the family—in short, a joint debut was reckoned the most eligible design. Here the excuses trailed off.

Olaf’s twisted sneer left little doubt where this plan had been hatched. “Why if it isn’t the orphaned Miss _Baudelaire_. Delighted to see you looking so well. You know my charming ward, of course.” He nodded toward Carmelita.

Violet, who had spent two years at Prufrock Boarding School being unrelentingly tormented by Carmelita, knew her a sight better than she cared to do so, and true to form, Carmelita was demanding to know _what_ Violet could be wearing on her head.

“It’s a wreath of fresh flowers that my sister picked for me.” Sunny had braided her hair in a coronet and crowned it with a wreath of dog-roses. Violet could say with perfect sincerity that she preferred this over Carmelita’s jeweled bandeau, which sported not one but _five_ ostrich feathers. Elaborate headdresses and a surfeit of feathers was how everyone went about at Court, sniffed Carmelita. Violet observed how fortunate it was they were neither of them being presented to the Queen tonight.

“Shall we go down?” came a bored drawl from Count Olaf. He offered his arm to Lady Squalor, Carmelita took Sir Jerome’s—though not before loosing a parting shot at Violet’s gloves—and the troop of them descended the stairs without a backward glance. Violet was left to speculate with mounting dread what dark designs had brought Count Olaf to London, for she did not for a moment believe he was here to bring his ward out. His presence troubled her much more than Lady Squalor’s barbarous brush-off. While Violet did not give a straw for fashion and would have liked nothing better than to swan about the rest of the Season in drawers and a riding-jacket, she could have hardly failed to notice that fashion was—after status—Lady Squalor’s paramount concern. Lady Squalor had deliberately humiliated Violet, and she had done so at Count Olaf’s instigation. As for Sir Jerome’s unsteadiness of character, that was something Violet could not have failed to notice either.

If Lady Squalor meant to depress Violet’s pretensions by not lifting a finger to introduce her to potential partners, she had reckoned without the allure of the fortune attached to Violet’s name. Word had doubtless circulated that the Baudelaire heiress had emerged from mourning, for Violet found herself claimed for every dance. It was exhausting. After a few hours she longed for a man who was neither an obvious fortune hunter, thrice widowed, nor a dead bore. Two out of three would do. The regrettably named Mr. Smells turned out to be the heir to the Lucky Smells Lumber Empire (this information she filed away for Klaus), and aside from a tendency to begin every other sentence with “My father says…” Violet rated him by far her most agreeable partner of the night.

Just when Violet decided she must either pretend to faint or actually do so from the exertion of listening to her partners drone on, the next one handed her a glass of punch and led her to a chair rather than the centre of the ballroom.

“Oh, but this is deliverance! I cannot thank you enough, Mr.—“

“Quagmire.”

“Not— Isadora’s brother? The one who is up at Oxford?“

“Alas, it seems Duncan has made up his mind to be a Cambridge man.”

“But my brother Klaus goes to Oxford in the fall! I must introduce you.”

“You must allow me to beg pardon for not making myself known to you, Miss Baudelaire,” he took her hand and bowed over it. “As Isadora is not precisely out yet, she sent me in her stead. I was happy to be of service.” He had an open countenance. She liked that.

“Oh, it is good to see a friendly face! I cannot think how I did not recognize your name on the dance card.”

“Ah. I traded places with a gentleman who owed me a favor. You are much sought after, Miss Baudelaire.”

”You are too kind. It is all on account of the fortune. I know my looks to be nothing out of the ordinary way.”

Mr. Quagmire quirked an eyebrow. “Indeed?”

“And having my sister for a modiste was … not ideal.”

Mr. Quagmire’s eyebrows rose into his hairline. “Your _sister_?”

“Well, since Lady Squalor could not spare her maid …” Here she paused. Her acquaintance with Mr. Quagmire was of five minutes’ standing. However, he was Isadora’s brother and he wasn’t at all stuffy and while she had had a number of dance partners she had yet to have a _conversational_ partner. So she took a deep breath and launched into an account of the duplicity of Lady Squalor. “How does she go from foisting a debut on me to supplanting me with that Spats girl in the space of a fortnight?”

“If it’s the same Miss Spats who terrorized Prufrock Boarding School, Isadora has told me of her, and I confess it has put me quite in charity with Lady Squalor,” he said with exaggerated seriousness.

Violet tried to suppress a smile and wound up nearly choking on a sip of punch. “You are entirely right. Lady Squalor is to be pitied! It cannot be said that her protege does her credit.”

“Rather the point, isn’t it? You set her next to Miss Spats and there’s no chance Lady Squalor won’t show to advantage. And if there is one thing she hates, it’s being outshone.” It seemed to Violet that Mr. Quagmire had a remarkably perceptive read on Lady Squalor’s character. “To tell the truth, I haven’t spoken with her above a dozen times. But she is what they call one of the leading lights of the _beau monde_ … and she is much in the company of my guardian,” he admitted.

“Your—But you are of age! That is to say, Isadora never mentioned it.” Isadora had said only that she and Duncan were under the nominal care of a distant relative whom they scarcely ever saw.

“I don’t suppose she wished to embarrass me. It’s hard on a fellow when another man holds the purse strings. But in three years I shall be twenty-four, and until then there is no circumventing my father’s will. No matter how nonsensical its codicils, as I think you have reason to know, Miss Baudelaire.”

“I—yes,” agreed Violet. “It is too bad but at least if your guardian is the same as Isadora’s, he does not seem an _interfering_ sort.”

“Oh, assuredly not. He is … disquieting, however. This intimacy with Lady Squalor is not the first instance of his name publicly linked with a lady whose position and means quite exceed his. Or even the first _married_ lady. Don’t suppose he has any choice, really—everyone knows he hasn’t a feather to fly with, and with his creditors dunning him at every step, it’s either become a parasite or become leg-shackled to an heiress. It’s a mercy Isadora stands to inherit no great sum, or I don’t doubt he’d come sniffing around us too.”

Something heavy settled in the pit Violet’s stomach. “You didn’t mention his name, Mr. Quagmire.”

“My guardian? It is Count Olaf.”

—

“So you see, Klaus, we must tell Sir Jerome.”

He did not look up from the slate he was making notes on. “We must do no such thing.”

She had found him in the library. He was always in the library; it was his refuge. Since their departure from Uncle Monty’s had left him without a tutor he had redoubled his application to his studies and it was everything Violet could do to cajole him out of his chair for a walk or a ride once in a great while. He complained savagely that Sir Jerome’s collection was both sparse and inadequate, yet he seemed to prefer to ensconce himself in a fortress of books than to risk a chance encounter with Sir Jerome or Lady Squalor before the dinner hour.

“But how can we permit him to continue in ignorance of the true situation? He has been kind to us, Klaus. He has let you have the library and Sunny the run of the kitchen.”

“He has left you to the tender mercies of his wife, who decides one minute to fete you and the next to snub you.” Klaus picked up his pencil, discovered the edge was too blunt to write with and muttered, “Blast!”

Violet held out her hand and Klaus dropped the pencil into her open palm. Ordinarily it was Sunny’s task to keep him supplied in writing utensils—chewing on them, she claimed, to keep her hand in the fire—but Sunny was helping Cook bake petits fours. Drawing a pocket knife out of her skirt, Violet proceeded to sharpen it with practiced precision. “I do not aver that Sir Jerome is a paragon of virtue, but consider: Aunt Josephine was not married to Count Olaf a year before she was cold in the ground. Could you live with yourself if a similar accident befell Sir Jerome?”

“If as a result Count Olaf leaves us alone for good, I would sleep soundly until Judgment Day,” declared Klaus. He shrugged off her elder-sisterly glare of approbation. “Violet, have _you_ considered what Sir Jerome is supposed to do with this information? What, for example, did he do when Lady Squalor publicly snubbed you?”

“He was—conciliatory.”

“He was spineless. Do you tell me he will persuade his wife to cut ties with Count Olaf, or else demand satisfaction from Olaf himself?” When he put it like that—Olaf and Jerome, pistols drawn at dawn—the idea was farcical. Lady Squalor was certainly not worth it.

And yet, could they also dismiss Aunt Josephine as easily? Aunt Josephine had been kind to them, “even if we were forever catching chills because she wouldn’t let the servants start a fire in the grate— _any_ of the grates.”

Klaus chuckled at the recollection. “It’s true I never disliked cold cuts until I had to have them for every meal.” In the month they had spent with Aunt Josephine while their parents were abroad, the three of them had huddled together in the nursery and Klaus had entertained his sisters by reciting most of the _Metamorphoses_ from memory. The nursery, being situated on the third story, was the warmest room in the house.

“I just don’t think _anyone_ deserves Count Olaf. Even demonstrably awful people like Lady Squalor.”

Klaus crossed his arms. “ _Anyone_ is not my concern. You and Sunny are.”

“Quigley says he’s not a Count at all, you know. With the recent troubles in France all kinds of people are claiming all sorts of fanciful titles.”

“Quigley says,” repeated Klaus, his expression shuttered. It was impossible to believe that only a moment ago he had been laughing. Violet often wished that other people could see Klaus in his unguarded moments. The laugh lines quite transformed his face, and he was no longer the grave, bookish youth that everyone took him for. It was like watching the sun come out. Except with his family, however, Klaus was careful and reserved, and Violet could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had laughed since they left Uncle Monty’s.

“I am sorry you were indisposed when Quigley and Isadora called this morning. You must come with us tomorrow to Hyde Park,” she urged, even though she knew what his answer would be.

Klaus spread his hands over the table to indicate his books, and Violet snorted. “If you can’t be bothered to interact with people, you may say so directly. And may I remind you that you _like_ Isadora.”

“You like Quigley,” he said. It was half a question and half an accusation. Yesterday he had been incensed that she might throw herself away on a loveless marriage. Today he was unmoved by the prospect that she might have met a suitor whose feelings she actually _could_ return. Violet was nonplussed. It was not that Klaus never took a pet over something trivial or irrational— it was just that usually when he did, it was because he’d identified an error in a passage of text and it rankled him that such inaccuracies should see print.

“You’ll like him too,” she insisted. “I’m sure of it.” She pressed the pencil back into his palm and a kiss to his temple.

—

Klaus remembered a cloudless day and a picnic organized by Aunt Josephine in the heady early days of her courtship with Count Olaf. Aunt Josephine was making up for all her long years of housebound solitude. Unfortunately, the weather had remained uncooperative and on this, the first clear day in a week, the roads were caked in mud. They all heard the sickening crunch of metal on wood before the carriage lurched to one side. They would discover that something sharp jutted out from between the mangled spokes. 

Violet had not waited to be handed out of the carriage. She was examining the broken wheel with interest when Aunt Josephine alighted, leaning on Count Olaf’s arm and demanding if she had taken leave of her senses. “If we stand out here in the road we shall be set upon by footpads!” 

“We shall be set upon much sooner if Violet doesn’t find a way to reattach the tyre-bolt,” Klaus pointed out tartly. Violet called for a chisel and he handed it to her.

“What can a chit of a girl know about repairing carriage wheels? This one can’t even paint a watercolor or play the pianoforte,” scowled Count Olaf. 

Klaus’s fingers balled into fists. He wanted to ask what Count Olaf knew about it, since as far as Klaus could tell the man’s only aptitude was for winkling credulous old women out of fortunes. “My sister,” he said, “can do _anything_ she sets her mind to.”

Aunt Josephine remained dubious. “Well, what if she can’t fix it? Are we supposed to wait for the brigands to come upon us?”

“Oh, she can always fix it,” he assured Aunt Josephine with perfect conviction. Though his back was to Violet he could feel her beaming at him. Her skirts were submerged in a puddle of mud and she was completely in her element.

—

Klaus put off meeting Mr. Quagmire as long as he could, no easy feat when the gentleman called for Violet almost daily. Sometimes Isadora accompanied him and other times not. Quigley took her to the Vauxhall Gardens, from which she came back marveling how cunningly the lanterns were festooned between the cast-iron pillars of the vaulted colonnade. When he took her to the Egyptian Hall she had the opportunity to examine, at leisure, Bonaparte’s famous bulletproof traveling carriage, the ingenious design of which she admired so much she was inspired to make several sketches of it. Mr. Quagmire even escorted her to the theatre, a pastime for which Violet had never before expressed the slightest interest back when Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire had had their own private box.

“It’s a reason to leave this curst house,” was her justification when Klaus queried her about it. “You can escape to the library and Sunny to the kitchen whereas I …”

“Is that what Mr. Quagmire is? An escape?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. It would help if you would come along with us and give me your opinion.”

“Of what?”

“Klaus, I cannot possibly accept an offer from a man you’ve never laid eyes on! Stop being a numbskull.”

He might have said _has there been an offer of marriage then_ , and could not fathom what was taking Mr. Quagmire so long to come to the point. In his place Klaus would have called the banns and borne Violet off for a trip to the Continent before the month was out. What he said was, “I can’t. I’m sorry.” He produced a few folded-up pages from his breast pocket. “Uncle Monty has sent me a letter of introduction to an old acquaintance, a retired sea-captain. His library is famous.”

Watching Violet’s face crumple with disappointment was like being told to stand perfectly still while someone twisted a knife in his guts. “I suppose you must go, for the sake of your studies …”

Klaus took to spending his afternoons in Captain Widdershins’s well-appointed library, being served tea by Captain Widdershins’s well-endowed daughter. If she were not still a schoolgirl he would have suspected her of putting out lures for him. Moreover, since he had neither birth nor fortune to recommend him, it was unlikely in the extreme that _any_ girl would go to the trouble of setting her cap for him. There was a more straightforward explanation: The cantankerous old man had taken a shine to Klaus, and made it his object to keep the boy around by whatever means available. In this case the means was Fiona. Captain Widdershins took pains to throw them together as much as possible. Klaus didn’t mind. Fiona was not a chatterer and she knew her father’s library inside out. He could settle into an armchair and remain there undisturbed until he was ready to set forth for Sir Jerome’s house. It was Fiona who brought him the note the day that Sunny came down with the measles.

She did not, as a rule, seek him out. If he needed something—a couple of buttered biscuits, a book of verb conjugations—he knew where to find her, in the garden with her mushrooms. So at first he did not know what to think when she appeared before him bearing a few lines scrawled in Violet’s careless hand. Then the import of those lines sank in, and Klaus was out the door so fast that Captain Widdershins was obliged to send a runner to Grosvenor Square with the heirloom pocket-watch Klaus had left behind in his haste.

It was both better and worse than he had feared. Though Sunny had begun to cough the fever had not yet taken hold. When he found Violet actually holding their little sister’s hand, however, his heart well nigh stopped beating. “I couldn’t bear to let her suffer alone,” she said pleadingly as Klaus chivvied her out of the room. “I sent for the doctor as soon as the rash appeared.”

Guilt, heavy as sin, had dogged him every step of the way to Sunny’s bedside. “I ought to have been here. Did she sneeze on you? No matter. Even if she didn’t, just breathing the same air is usually sufficient. Violet, you must promise me not to set foot over that threshold while she is contagious. You never had it as a child, and they say it takes you harder if you catch it when you’re grown.”

She promised. This, he knew, merely meant that she would haunt the hall for hourly reports of how Sunny went on, but as Klaus returned to the sickroom to bear Sunny company the thought that was uppermost in his mind was _nine out of ten_. That was the statistic: nine out of ten people who were exposed would succumb to the illness. Violet would just have to beat the odds, he decided.

Klaus had had the measles when he was five. Seven-year-old Violet had been packed off to Uncle Monty’s, and the month’s separation was the longest the two of them had up until that point experienced. It was hard, of course, to be covered in spots and for one’s nose to be continually running, but to be kept away from Violet did quite as much as the fever to depress his spirits. He did not make a full recovery until she was admitted back into the nursery. _At least Sunny won’t have to go through this alone._ Sunny was a model patient who gamely guzzled every concoction the doctor prescribed, swallowed every pastille, and even submitted to a diet of weak tea and toast, never uttering a word of protest against its blandness. Her chief complaint was thirstiness, and Klaus was always on hand to dribble some water through her puffed-up lips. Toward evening of the third day her temperature spiked, and as Klaus murmured lullabies and held cold compresses to her forehead, he could hear the indistinct din of raised voices floating past. When Sunny at last fell into a fitful sleep he slipped into the antechamber where Violet was waiting. The first thing he did was inspect the inside of her mouth for the telltale white lesions that foretold an infection. There were none. That was a relief. All the same they had agreed to remain on opposite sides of the divan, lest the virus yet clung to his skin or his clothing. After he assured her Sunny’s condition was stable he asked, “Was that Mr. Poe I heard?”

Violet affirmed that it was. “Lady Squalor desires to have Sunny removed—to where, she did not say. She has an abhorrence of illness.”

“So she charged a lawyer to expel a four-year-old in the throes of the measles into the _street_?”

“Oh, you need not worry, I coughed in their faces. Vigorously. That did the trick.” Sir Jerome and Lady Squalor had announced their intention to quit the City the very next day for one of the seaside resorts. “I didn’t escape without a lecture from Mr. Poe, to be sure. As if I could have prevented Sunny contracting a highly communicable disease, and as if he cares a jot whether she is at death’s door, so long as she is not inconveniencing him! Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone and let us stay with Uncle Monty?”

“I miss Uncle Monty too,” sighed Klaus. “I miss him almost more than I miss Mother and Father.” Violet shot him an enquiring look. “Of course it hurt to lose Mother and Father. It still hurts. But I’m angry at them too. Were it anyone else, I would cheerfully run them through with a sword for the pain they have caused you with that confounded will.” He waited for the recoil that must come.

Violet said mildly, “You made them send the fencing instructor away. You haven’t any notion how to wield a sword.”

“Tell me true, do you sincerely wish to marry Quigley Quagmire? Because if you do, I will seek his acquaintance tomorrow.”

“You had better not: none of the Quagmires have had the measles.” She added, more tentatively, “Do I understand you to mean that you were _not_ calling upon Captain Widdershins to avail yourself of his library? That your object was to avoid Quigley?”

“I am sure he is a perfectly amiable fellow. Only if I saw you with him, and your feelings were—what they must be, I could not endure it. I freely own that my behavior was cowardly. I owe you an apology. It was one thing when you were set on marrying a man who must, in all likelihood, be repugnant to you—I told myself I was furious on your behalf. Mr. Quagmire is not that, however. On whose behalf shall I be angry? Only my own.”

She was looking at him like she’d just clapped eyes on him for the first time this age. Anyone would think he’d been quarantined with the measles for a year. Abruptly she came towards him and pulled him into a hug. He startled back. “We agreed—“

“I’ll take my chances.” He didn't protest. He was already burying his nose in her hair, carding his fingers through the silky cascade of it. If there was anything in the world he wanted more than to hold his sister in his arms, he could no longer recall what it was. “Klaus, listen to me. I haven’t seen Quigley in four days. He sent flowers, you know. I haven’t spared a single thought for him, not even a thank-you for the flowers. Do you know what happened when you spent all last week closeted with Captain Widdershins? Not an hour passed that I did not think of something I wanted to say to you. I would open my mouth and you wouldn’t be there. So you will cease to be a goose and I will hear no more about my _feelings_ , please.”

Klaus, who was moving his lips soundlessly against the shell of her ear, paused to hold her at arm’s length and study her upturned face. Her eyes were bright and imploring. “I swear I don’t know which is worse, to suppose you’d marry him out of love for him, or out of love for me and Sunny. I wish to God you’d decide to do something because _you_ want to.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t gone three days without physical contact. Maybe if Sunny hadn’t fallen sick, if their parents hadn’t perished in the fire, if every other person in the whole wide world hadn’t abandoned them. But when Violet lifted a trembling finger to touch the corner of his mouth, Klaus could not stop himself: He kissed her, or she kissed him, he could not afterwards tell to which of them the idea had first occurred. She gave a small exhale of contentment against his jaw. Something clicked into place then like the fine metal tooth of a gear, like one of the clockwork devices that used to litter Violet’s workbench, and began whirring away.

—

After Sunny’s fever broke it was another week until the doctor pronounced her out of danger, cautioning Klaus to keep her away from the rest of the household while she remained infectious. They received no word from Sir Jerome and Lady Squalor until the carriage was seen driving up, disgorging not only the Squalors but Count Olaf as well. The butler intoned that they were to be five sitting down to dinner, and that her ladyship desired Violet’s presence in the drawing-room.

Violet went. Her trepidation was borne out when she found Lady Squalor and Count Olaf sitting cozily on the sofa drinking tea.

“Violet, there you are! Will you have a biscuit?”

Violet declined the biscuit but expressed the hope that Lady Squalor’s expedition had been a pleasant one. This polite inquiry was batted away in favor of, “Now that little Sunny is quite recovered, I think it’s past time we were thinking of sending her away to school.”

“You amaze me, ma’am. Sunny is _four_. And she is far from recovered.”

“You are very young, and when you have children of your own you’ll understand there is no coddling a weak constitution such as hers. Count Olaf was just telling me he knows just the place that will cure her.”

With every syllable out of Lady Squalor’s mouth a quiet rage was growing in Violet. “Sunny _is_ my own. She is _mine_ , my flesh and blood.”

“I’m afraid you are mistaken. You are all three of you under my care, and I have determined that Sunny would be better off somewhere not-in-my-house.”

Violet turned to Count Olaf. “This is your doing,” she hissed.

Olaf’s toad-eating grin was not in the least convincing. “I am at Lady Squalor’s disposal.”

“You are a snake, and you murdered Aunt Josephine, and you’re probably planning to murder Sir Jerome so you can marry another rich widow.”

The shrill peal of Lady Squalor’s laughter shattered the air like glass. “My dear, why would we settle for _one_ fortune when we could have two? I am not going to marry Count Olaf, silly girl, _you_ are.”

That “we” told Violet everything she needed to know. Count Olaf was not scamming Lady Squalor, they were in cahoots. Klaus had been right, and she ought never have apprehended any danger to anyone else while Count Olaf had Violet and Klaus and Sunny squarely in his sights. She was aghast both at the man’s audacity and her own folly for failing to see what was right before her nose. “What power on earth could induce me to marry you?”

“Why, if you ever wish to see your sister again, I should think you would desire it above all things. I do, after all, have the ear of her guardian.” And he smiled his grotesque gap-toothed crooked yellow smile and even had the gall to wink at her.

—

Violet did not go back up to the sickroom. Instead she went to intercept Quigley who at this hour would be riding in the park. He pulled up short at the sight of her obvious agitation. “Violet! What is the matter? Has something happened to Sunny?”

“No,” she replied dully. “I changed my mind about Gretna Green. Let’s leave tomorrow.”

He stopped again and appraised her, and did not like what he saw. “Walk with me,” he said, handing the reins to his groom and drawing her into the shrubbery. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what has put you in such a state.”

“Some time ago you asked me to do you the honor of becoming your wife, and I accept,” she told him, for all the world as if she were buckling on a breast plate before battle.

Quigley appeared more disconcerted than gratified by this intelligence. “You have made me the happiest of men. But don’t you recall why you were not able to give me an answer straightaway? You had conditions—and I am not now any more in a position to satisfy them than I was then.”

“I know that but we don’t have _time_ ,” she insisted. “If I don’t marry Count Olaf they’ll take Sunny away forever, and I thought, well, if I was already married to you….” and then she told him of the conversation that had transpired in the drawing-room.

“Am I to understand that Lady Squalor is acting as Count Olaf’s _procurer_?” She nodded mutely. “But that is… how can she be allowed to do that? How can either of them expect to escape justice?”

At some point during the tale her eyes had brimmed over with tears. “If there is one lesson I have learned since I lost my parents, it is that the world is governed by injustice. There is no one to bring the villains to account, Quigley. All I want to do is keep my siblings safe. Will you not help me?”

There was an inviting bench installed under a grove of trees. Quigley had hoped for an arbor or a gazebo but he steered her past the flower-beds and bade her sit down. “You came to me because you feel powerless against the designs of evil people. But shall I remind you what you said the day I declared myself to you?” And he proceeded to quote back to her, word for word, exactly what was said. It went something like this: When he proposed an elopement it had been half in jest. He had not expected Violet to take him at his word. She had all but packed a valise for the journey before they came to the sticking point which of course was Oxford. “It can make no difference. Your brother is more than clever enough to secure a scholarship.”

“And have all the other lads treat him as _less than_ , when it is known he is on the foundation?”

“Violet, you know my situation.”

“As you know mine.”

“It will be another three years before I reach my majority, and my income will be my own, and when that happens—“

“—Klaus will have taken a First. For which he’ll endure three years of taunts of ’charity boy.’ You have seen it with your own eyes. You call them _Servitors_ , don’t you? The dependent members?”

“Yes, but—“

“Klaus is a gentleman born. I will not, I _can_ not subject him to that humiliation.”

Quigley, finally losing patience, demanded, “Do you ever think of anyone other than Klaus?”

“Naturally I think of Sunny too,” she huffed.

He said quietly, “Then it would be unjust, would it not, for me to come between you?”

It was the tone that hurt more than the words. “Quigley, you of all people ought to understand. You have siblings of your own.”

“None whose happiness I rate above yours,” and that’s when Violet realized that hers was not the most acute hurt.

“Quigley, I…

“Don’t really want to marry me, and never did. It’s all right, my girl. Your object was to protect Klaus and Sunny—heaven knows I could see that from the outset. I had supposed, however, that while that exigency was the seed of your regard for me, over time it might grow into something more substantial. But it seems I am only the best of a bad lot.” Here he gave her a small, wry smile.

“You cannot imagine that I would contemplate a flight to the Border in the company of Charles Smells!” she protested.

“By Jupiter, no. Mr. Smells’s father might be persuaded to buy your brother an officer’s commission, but he would stand firm against the expense of a university education. And you must own, your brother would make a very poor soldier.”

The anxiety induced by the prospect of Klaus compelled to go for a _soldier_ must have shown plainly on her face. Quigley had chuckled and taken her hand, but instead of kissing it he had shaken it and told her they must part friends. That was three weeks ago. “…And as your friend, Violet, I tell you now there is only one man whose happiness you would not sacrifice to Sunny’s, and it isn’t me. You are extraordinary—I admire and cherish you—but I have enough pride that I could not live with the knowledge that I come second in your heart.”

The effect of this long monologue upon Violet was not precisely what Quigley might have predicted. Her discomposure had subsided, yet in its place there was a determined set to her chin that Klaus would have instantly recognized. She was incubating an invention. Had her hair been tied up in a ribbon half an hour ago? Surely not. “Quigley, you are a _genius_! Would you be willing to do a friend a very large favor? Would you make the journey to Gretna Green after all—on your own?”

—

In the end it was comically easy to arrange their escape. Lack of funds inhibited them until Violet remembered their mother’s jewels, which Uncle Monty had insisted she bring with her to wear during her Season. Klaus feared she might be reluctant to part with them, but she was philosophical about it: “We can’t take her where we’re going, can we? It’s her last gift to us.” She in turn feared that Klaus would wish to send word to Uncle Monty. This, he was brought to agree, was too dangerous. They waited for the bloom of health to return to Sunny’s cheeks before they booked passage for America under assumed names. Quigley was to leave for Scotland the same day the ship sailed—he and Violet had coordinated on the composition of a pair of very pretty letters addressed to their respective guardians—and the scandal of their supposed elopement was calculated to kick up enough dust to cover the Baudelaires’ tracks.

If there was one thing that Violet felt uneasy about, it was that betimes she looked at Klaus and saw the little boy whom she had taught to tie his shoelaces and form his letters, and when she looked again her heart would do an involuntary ker-thump because she had also taught him how a woman liked to be touched. “I want my first everything to be with you,” he breathed into her collarbone that fateful night outside Sunny’s sickroom. The combination of earnest, tender, and ardent was everything she loved about Klaus. She kissed the tip of his nose and vowed, “First, last, and always.” Now she was watching the shoreline of England recede from view for probably the last time. Klaus had one arm slung around her and Sunny perched on his shoulders. He was fair to bursting with pride. “You’ve done it, Violet. You’ve saved our family.”


End file.
